Synthetic biology — little progress at COP16 in Cali

The 16th Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP) of the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty (CBD) in Cali pro­duced few encour­ag­ing results with regard to the Pre­cau­tion­ary Prinici­ple and the effec­tive reg­u­la­tion of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered organ­isms, par­tic­u­lar­ly gene dri­ves.

Save Our Seeds had sent one staff mem­ber and one con­sul­tant. We cam­paigned for

(1) the con­tin­u­a­tion and deep­en­ing of hori­zon scan­ning, mon­i­tor­ing and assess­ment of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments in syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy. A mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary expert group, in which SOS has also been involved, had rec­om­mend­ed a clos­er analy­sis of a num­ber of devel­op­ments, includ­ing the inte­gra­tion of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) into syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and gene dri­ves;

(2) a revi­sion of the pro­posed guid­ance for the risk assess­ment of gene dri­ves and the devel­op­ment of fur­ther risk assess­ment guid­ance for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied fish, oth­er aquat­ic organ­isms and self-lim­it­ing insects. The draft guide­lines on gene dri­ves had been devel­oped with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Tar­get Malar­ia in such a way that their appli­ca­tion is insuf­fi­cient to pro­tect against the com­plex risks of gene dri­ves.

The fol­low­ing res­o­lu­tions were adopt­ed:

(1) An expert group with a new com­po­si­tion will con­tin­ue the hori­zon scan­ning in the area of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, but will not deep­en it. The main focus should be on the con­tri­bu­tion of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy to achiev­ing the objec­tives of the Kun­ming-Mon­tre­al Agree­ment.

(2) A fur­ther group of experts should exam­ine the need for new risk assess­ment guid­ance for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms under the Carta­ge­na Pro­to­col. Ini­tial­ly, no fur­ther guid­ance will be devel­oped for fish or oth­er genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms.

In addi­tion, a Cali Fund has been cre­at­ed to ensure that coun­tries of the Glob­al South, as well as Indige­nous peo­ples and local com­mu­ni­ties, also ben­e­fit from the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of dig­i­tal­ly stored genet­ic sequences. To start with, biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies are invit­ed to mak­ing vol­un­tary pay­ments into this fund.

At the next COP in two years, the par­ties to the Carta­ge­na Pro­to­col will also dis­cuss the dif­fer­ing legal require­ments for so-called gene edit­ing. Var­i­ous coun­tries have exempt­ed or are in the process of exclud­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms devel­oped with gene edit­ing from their GMO reg­u­la­tions.